Why
by bobbirose
Summary: John yells at Sherlock for being dead. Pretty much it. There's some f-bombing in there but no smut.


"I don't care how you faked it. I want to know _why_."

This confused Sherlock. This caught him off-guard. The detective cocked his head, creasing his brow and looking, startled, at the almost crazed expression his army doctor had before him. Staring intensely at him. Trying to see through him. For what?

_For information._

Ah, and that would explain the intense glare, the impatient tightening of his features and the frankly odd question. Why? Why would he want to know _why_?

_Ask him._

"Why? Are you sure? Because _how_ is a much more interesting answer," Sherlock asked/replied, still looking quizzically at the fuming John before him.

"IT ISN'T TO ME." John roared, throwing his hands wildly up in the air and widening his eyes the way he did when he was properly angry with Sherlock. Not the anger of _why-are-you-putting-human-eyes-where-I-keep-my-milk_ or even the anger of _I-am-not-sleeping-on_-_the-couch-because-you-set-your-bed-on-fire. _This was beyond _you-drugged-and-terrified-me-for-an-experiment_; this was proper fury; this was _why-were-you-dead-you-were-fucking-DEAD_.

_So not about information. He wants to know why but he wants you to know something too, and he wants you to know that first._

Sherlock stared at John, more relaxed now. John sees the tension that had settled on the detective dissipate as the familiar "_ah"_ expression replaced it. John wanted to scream at the tension _COME BACK TENSION YOU WERE WORKING FOR ME._ He wanted to grab the tension. He wanted to throw it at Sherlock along with everything he had felt in the past two years. He knows from his therapist-no, he knows from _morality_ that you're not supposed to wish your grief onto anyone else but, fuck that, because he didn't have the _right_.

"Oh, CHRIST, NO. You are NOT ALLOWED to fucking DEDUCE ME when I'm TRYING TO MAKE A POINT!" John screamed in exasperation.

"My deductions are not hampering your point. They are merely aiding me in understanding you." Sherlock replied, too calmly.

"No, they're not, because I know what you really do, you see right through me? You think you understand something about me that I don't, you think my point is veiled by what I'm actually saying but IT'S NOT! YOU DON'T! YOU DON'T KNOW! Maybe you can tell me what my heart rate is right now, or-or what month I'm going to die in-"

"I couldn't possibly tell you your month of death, John."

John saw red, trying to push past that comment with the little self-control he still had left.

"-but Sherlock," he continued, voice still shaking with rage and grief and who-the-hell-knows-what, "you don't know people. You know their physicality, you know their technical functions. And I thought you understood me just a _little_, enough to care, maybe. But you don't, I guess, you just had to go-I don't even fucking know-win your _game_ with Moriarty. Your FUCKING GAME OF _CHESS_ was more important than the YEARS you spent with me, the RELATIONSHIP we built, our FRIENDSHIP! So YOU DON'T GET TO DEDUCE ME! YOU HEAR THAT? STOP!"

"_Why, _John?"

"BECAUSE YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT MY POINT IS!"

"_What is your point._" Sherlock was getting impatient trying to get John to his own conclusion. Why wouldn't he just admit it? Why wouldn't he admit he just needed to get his anger out?

_Because there is something behind his anger._

Sherlock exhaled at his revelation, and stood up almost unconsciously.

"You want to know what my point is?" John asked quietly, dangerously, stepping closer to the detective.

"Yes," Sherlock rumbled, drawing himself up to his full height and extending his arms every so slightly.

"My point."

"Your point," he barely breathed it, waiting, with bated breath, for the final piece the click in.

"My point is this. I watched you fall from St. Barts and I was almost certain it was the only time in your life when you had no control over what was happening to you. My point is this. I was hospitalized for three weeks after getting my stomach pumped because I tried to drink you back alive and myself into oblivion. My point is this. I was fired for spending my shifts staring at a newly-uncovered photo of you-" he closed his eyes, and gasped suddenly as a tear escaped somehow between the creases of his closed eyelids- "or r-reading and re-reading a tabloid article on-on you, or going through your t-texts on my phone-" he was openly sobbing now- "my point is that I watched you fall from St. Barts and I was almost certain it was the only time in your life when you had no control over what was happening to you and it turns out that the great Sherlock Holmes can even choose when he dies, and when I die too-" John was moving rapidly closer to Sherlock and the latter was moving almost ghostly towards John-"because I DIED WHEN YOU FELL AND YOU LIVED and _how is that fair_?"

John collapsed against Sherlock's chest, tears staining the dark purple of his shirt-and the detective's arms caught him and held him steadily and firmly against him.

"John." he said warmly, bending his head down so his nose brushed the top of John's hair. "I could _never_ do that again."

"Why not?" asked John thickly, bitterly, looking up disbelievingly at Sherlock.

"Because it's not fair."


End file.
